Dark Places

of my car. She had a wide, doll-like face that glowed in the streetlight, light brown hair pulled back in a ponytail from a domed forehead.
    “Hey, you got a cigarette I could bum?” she said, her head jittering like a Parkinson’s patient.
    “You OK?” I asked, trying to get a better look at her, guess her age. Fifteen, sixteen. She was shivering in a thin sweatshirt over a miniskirt and boots that were supposed to look sexy but on her looked childish, a kindergartner playing cowgirl.
    “You got a cigarette?” she repeated, brightening, her eyes wet. She gave a quick bounce on her heels, looked from me to Lyle, who was watching the pavement.
    I had a pack somewhere in the back of my car, so I leaned in and rummaged through old fast-food wrappers, an assortment of tea bags I’d swiped from a restaurant (another thing no one should ever buy: tea bags), and a pile of cheap metal spoons (ditto). The cigarette pack had three cigs left, one of them broken. I doled out the other two, flicked a lighter, the girl leaning in crookedly, then finally hitting the flame,
Sorry I can’t see a thing without my glasses
. I lit my cigarette, let my head do its heat-wave dance after that first rush of nicotine.
    “I’m Colleen,” she said, sucking on the cigarette. The temperature had dropped quickly with the sun, we stood across from each other bouncing up and down to keep warm.
    Colleen. It was too sweet a name for a hooker. Someone had once had different plans for this girl.
    “How old are you, Colleen?”
    She glanced back toward the truck park and smiled, hunched down in her shoulders. “Oh, don’t worry, I’m not working there. I work over there.” She pointed to the middle strip club with her middle finger. “I’m legal. I don’t need to …” She nodded back toward the row of trucks, all of them immobile, despite what was happening inside. “We just try to keep an eye out for some of the girls that do work it. Sisterhood thing. You new?”
    I’d worn a low-cut top, assuming it might make Krissi more comfortable when I found her, signal I wasn’t a prude. Colleen was looking at my cleavage now with the eyes of a jeweler, trying to match my tits to the correct club.
    “Oh, no. We’re looking for a friend. Krissi Cates? You know her?”
    “She may have a different last name now,” Lyle said, then looked away toward the highway.
    “I know a Krissi. Older?”
    “Mid-thirties or so.” Colleen’s whole body was humming. I assumed she was on uppers. Or maybe she was just cold.
    “Right,” she said, finishing her cigarette in one aggressive pull. “She picks up some day shifts at Mike’s sometimes.” She pointed to the farthest club, where the neon said only G-R-S.
    “That doesn’t sound good.”
    “It’s not. But you gotta retire sometime, right? Still it sucks for her, because I guess she spent a lot of money on a boob job, but Mike still didn’t think she was primetime anymore. But at least the boob job was tax deductible.”
    Colleen said all this with the perky ruthlessness of a teenager who knew she had decades before such humiliations touched her.
    “So should we come back during the day shift?” Lyle asked.
    “Mmm. You could wait here,” she said in a babyish voice. “She should be done soon.” She motioned back toward the line of trucks. “I need to get ready for work, thanks for the cigarette.”
    She trotted, again with that push of the shoulders, toward the dark middle building, flung the door wide, and disappeared inside.
    “I think we should go, this sounds like a dead end,” Lyle said. I was about to snap at him for going chickenshit on me, tell him to just wait in the car, when another shadow climbed out of a truck far back in the line, and began heading toward the parking lot. All the women here walked as if they were pushing against a monstrous headwind. My stomach lurched at a lonely image of me trapped here or somewhere like it. It wasn’t so unlikely, for a woman with no family, no money and no skills. A woman with a certain unwholesome pragmatism. I’d spread my legs for nice men I knew would be good for a few months of free meals. I’d done it and never felt guilty, so how much would it take to find me here? I felt my throat tighten for a second, and then snapped to. I had money coming now.
    The figure was all shadow: I could make out a halo of ruined hair, the jutting edges of short shorts, an oversized purse, and thick,muscular legs. She came out of the dark